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Monday, March 15, 2010

NETANYAHU AND THE AFTERMATH OF ISRAEL'S POINTED INSULT TO VISTING VICE-PRESIDENT BIDEN - WHERE ISRAEL'S SAVAGE BEHAVIOR IS TAKING US

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

Netanyahu is beyond reaching by criticism or speeches, being one of the worst in a long series of prime ministers ready to do almost anything to achieve Israel's unspoken goal: getting rid of all Palestinians and taking all their homes and farms.

There can be no defense of such unethical and brutal behavior, although a large number of Israel's apologists keep trying. After all, the United States went to war when the Serbs were doing much the same kinds of things.

I fear Israel is going to confront the world with a true crisis in the next decade or so, as it drives out the 1.5 million people from Gaza and the several million from the West Bank, and it would do this with no compensation for taking people's property or disrupting their lives.

The blockade of Gaza is nothing but a brutal attempt to drive the people out under the pretense that Israel can't live with "terrorists." Gaza has always been a nightmare for Israel's leaders: 1.5 million refugees huddled in a small enclave inside Israel's claimed territory.

There is little hope to preventing a disaster it seems to me simply because the United States is the only force on earth that can demand reason from Israel, and the lobby for Israel has the members of Congress caught in a web of sophisticated campaign-financing techniques and the threat of unpleasant, noisy opposition at each election.

When President Truman was pondering the question of whether the United States should immediately recognize the state of Israel then emerging from a wave of terror by outfits like Stern and Irgun, frightening Palestinians into a mass exodus from their homes, he is said to have remarked that the lobbying efforts coming at him were like nothing he had ever experienced, overwhelming.

And he faced an election as an underdog candidate, so campaign funds were critical, and that’s how Israel gained recognition.

And nothing has changed: Obama just signed an agreement for $30 billion in American assistance over ten years, yet Israel is neither a poor country nor is it seriously under threat from anyone. That’s more aid than anyone anywhere receives, even people in far greater need. That is only possible under the influence of an extremely tough lobby at home.

So despite well justified criticism from America’s administration as the Vice-president recovers from the grotesque public insult of Israel’s announcing new settlements in East Jerusalem to coincide with his trip, it is almost impossible America will start enforcing fairness on Israel.

And so a truly ugly world crisis seems unavoidable not too far in the future.

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"Mr Chuckman knows, Gaza is under the control of Hamas, a fundamentalist organization openly dedicated to anti-Semitic principles and to the destruction of Israel. Its goal is simply to cast out the infidels and impose Sharia law over all of Palestine."

Just more of the countless repetitions of mindless, going-in-circles arguments.

First, Hamas is not a terrorist organization, except by Israeli declaration. Its history was overwhelmingly as a humanitarian organization.

It was actually secretly supported earlier by Israel's secret service, in an effort to create competition for Fatah, so it cannot have been viewed as much of a threat.

When Hamas became a political party, it ran a clean election and was honestly elected. Most of its senior leaders are professional-type people, not terrorists. Hamas for the Palestinians represented the hope for clean government after the endless corruption of Fatah.

Anyway, no matter what you might imagine Hamas to be, one is supposed to talk to one's opponents for peace. Just because I have neighbors with whom I don’t agree doesn’t give me the right to attack them, attempt to starve them out, imprison them, or murder them, but Israel claims this insane right.

Israel has never ever talked with a legitimate government. As we all know from history – Nixon and China for example – often extreme foes are better able to make peace.

Anyway, all Israel did for years was treat Arafat as though he were a clod of dirt, and many suspect Israel finally assassinated him with poison, something they’ve done many times to others.

If you want peace, you talk, you compromise, and you do not even need American assistance to do so.

If you don’t want peace – indeed, if you want to make those with whom you disagree disappear and you want to seize their property - you do just as Israel does year after year.